Cozy Apologia Lesson Plan

"Cozy Apologia" is a poem by the former U.S. poet-laureate Rita Dove. I was first published in her 2004 collection, American Smooth, and has also been published by the Poetry Foundation. It is dedicated to her husband, Fred Viebhan, and explores the mundanity of long term relationships, the assuming of gender roles and norms, as well as the affects of the digital age on one's expectations for what love should look like. Throughout, the poem is marked by an embarrassment, a shame over the way in which the speaker and her husband's lives have gone. It is an apologia--an explanation--of the lives they have relaxed into after so many years together.